The Calling (16 page)

“You’re going to explain about him, aren’t you?”
 

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
 

“He said that was the first thing I should do. To come and see you so you could explain.”
 

“That’s right.” He leaned forward, ignored the pack of smokes this time and poured both me and himself another glass. “Now, where should I begin?”

Chapter 16

A
s almost any self-respecting parent will tell you, all children are gifts from God. Others might disagree, instead explaining how a child’s birth is simply the ongoing development of the Evolutionary Process. And with apologies to Charles Darwin, those latter few must be out of their minds. Because for any father—or any person, for that matter—who has actually been in the delivery room and watched as a woman has given birth, there is absolutely no way they can doubt the existence of God. Even the most hardheaded atheist will think it once, if not for an instant, as he or she witnesses the miracle of life, before continuing to disbelieve the notion of a higher being. Well, okay, that’s all fine and good, but how exactly can two simple cells merge together and, nine months later, produce a living and breathing thing? No, that is why every child is a gift from God, not just a product of millions upon millions of years of evolution.
 

For Moses and Sabrina Cunningham, their son was not just a gift from God.
 

He was a miracle.
 

The reason for this is because after two years of trying for a baby with nothing to show for it, both had gone to the doctor. As it turned out, Moses had a low sperm count and Sabrina’s tubes were damaged. How exactly this happened neither Sabrina nor the doctor had any idea (“He said she had no STDs, which usually causes it,” Moses said), but obviously something had happened, probably when she was very young. There was absolutely no way, barring a miracle, that the two of them would conceive. Had they ever considered adoption?
 

Yes, they had in fact considered adoption, but for them it wasn’t a realistic option. At least not at the moment. Sabrina worked as a first grade teacher, Moses as a youth pastor at their church, and for some reason the idea of adopting just didn’t appeal to them. The process itself was what kept them away. They’d heard horror stories from other couples that couldn’t have children and tried adopting, and they just didn’t think they could do the same. One couple in particular had come so close to actually getting a baby, until the mother, a day after giving birth, decided she wanted to keep the baby for her own. The couple had been heartbroken, and both Moses and Sabrina didn’t want to face the same. They were already heartbroken as it was.
 

“Then,” Moses said, his voice soft, “just one day Sabrina got pregnant. It was about a year after the doctor told us she would never be able to carry, and we’d given up even trying.”
 

Sabrina’s period was late, which was odd of course, but not as odd as the morning sicknesses which immediately followed. Here was a woman Moses had met his first year in Ohio, where he’d come to help build a church, a woman he’d fallen in love with at first sight, and a woman he had promised a life together with love and happiness. And while the love had been there, the happiness had faded away at the news that they would never have children. Except now these strange symptoms were occurring, symptoms that surely couldn’t mean what they thought, and so they went to see the doctor again. He was the same doctor who had told them almost a year ago that sorry, no, you both can’t have kids, I know it’s hard to hear but keep your chins up, there are other people out there worse off than you. Now he ran tests and came back, his head shaking from side to side, and stared up at them with the most perplexed look in his eyes.
 

“He told us Sabrina was pregnant, and I swear, something broke inside him. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was doubt, because his science had failed him. He just shook his head, and simply said, ‘It’s a miracle.’ ”
 

Yes, it was a miracle; there was no doubt about that in either of their minds. And for the next eight months their lives changed drastically. They’d been in love before but now that love had blossomed even more, had really begun to shine. People who worked with them even commented on their sudden good moods. Moses got a second job working at a local movie theater, since there was no way they would be able to support a child without some extra income. They just had enough to get by as it was, not to mention with another mouth to feed and another body to clothe and another person to love. But neither of them minded. They were up for the challenge and couldn’t wait.
 

Except happiness is something that should never be taken for granted. When people are happy they don’t see things as clearly as they should. They see things in a different light, and not in a light that best represents reality. Had both Moses and Sabrina seen things as they had a year before, maybe they might not have been surprised by what happened next.
 

“Really, looking back, I wasn’t surprised at all. Everything was just so perfect. And the thing is, besides God, nothing’s perfect. There’s always something that will change, that will falter, that will snap its fingers in front of our faces to wake us up out of the fairy tale we’ve been living in. For us, it was the day Joey was born. The day Sabrina died.”
 

Her water broke early that morning, a week before the due date. Moses grabbed the bags they had packed and drove her to the hospital. The entire time he held her hand and told her just how much he loved her, how she meant everything to him, and how everything was going to be okay.
 

Once they arrived and got her inside, she was immediately taken away. Moses had been left filling out more forms than he could handle, and before he finished the last one a doctor and nurse approached him. He knew from the moment the doctor’s eyes met his that something was wrong. Some internal switch flicked itself off and his legs lost their strength. He almost fell but managed to hold onto the counter, and just stared back at the doctor. He asked her what it was, and she told him, with only slight hesitation, before saying she was very sorry and then walking away, leaving the nurse to stand by and console him.
 

Simply put, there had been some kind of complication. Something that had to do with her damaged Fallopian tubes. The baby had made it but Sabrina had not.
 

“I didn’t really even react until the nurse said something to me. The doctor had just told me my wife was dead and I didn’t even blink. But when the nurse asked me if I was okay, I ... I just lost it.” Moses stared down at his drink in front of him. “I started shouting at her, even cursing some. I made quite a scene. The nurse actually looked frightened. The doctor had given me the bad news but I was taking it out on this other woman, calling her a liar right to her face. And she kept repeating the same thing over and over, she kept saying, ‘But your baby is alive.’ And do you want to hear something terrible? At that instant, I hated that baby more than anything in the world. I hated my son because he’d taken my wife away from me.”
 

In fact, for the first two days, Moses wanted nothing at all to do with Joey. He didn’t want to hold him, didn’t even want to touch him. He only wanted to be alone. Then finally he went to the maternity ward and stared down at his baby through the glass. His child wasn’t difficult to find, as it was the only black infant among a dozen whites, and Moses simply stared. A part of him had hoped for some kind of reaction at seeing the thing that had caused his wife to die, something that might take his hate away or even increase it. But he felt nothing. Then, as if knowing his father was watching, Joey opened his eyes and looked up at Moses.
 

And at that instant everything changed. All the hatred and disgust Moses had felt toward his child suddenly vanished, was suddenly washed away clean. What shone through was love, an undying love that was somehow even stronger than what Moses had felt for his own wife.
 

 
Moses named him Joseph, the name both he and Sabrina had decided on in case they had a boy (their choice for a girl was conveniently Josephine). He took his baby home to a house he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford much longer. Not with Sabrina gone, as her job had really been what kept them afloat financially. So Moses had no choice but to sell the house. They moved into a condominium three months after Joey was brought home from the hospital. One bedroom, one bathroom and a kitchen—it was almost like a bachelor pad, only there was a crib in the corner and a child seat at the table, as well as a closet filled with diapers and baby wipes and baby food.
 

“I believe it’s obvious that all women have some maternal instinct. They know when their children are hungry, when they’re scared, when they’re happy or sad. But most men just don’t have that. When I went home from the hospital and then sold the house and moved into the apartment, I was doing it with a baby and a responsibility that scared me to death. Sabrina was the one who was supposed to know what to do, not me. But I tried my best and did everything I possibly could, and I think in the end Joey took more care of me than I took care of him.”
 

Moses kept his job at the church, which of course mourned the loss of Sabrina. Even the people at the movie theater were sensitive. Joey went into daycare as much as Moses would allow (which meant as much as he could afford), but the rest of the time he stayed at home. On the weekends, if the church didn’t require his time, Moses would just sit on the couch—which was pretty much the only piece of furniture in the entire place—and lay there with Joey on his chest. Joey, a pacifier in his mouth (what he would in a year or so call a “nub-nub”), slept peacefully, simply content to listen to his father’s constant heartbeat. Even at night, when he awoke crying, Moses would lie down and hold his son’s ear to his chest, and within minutes the baby would be asleep again, lost in the world of dreams.
 

But had Moses known just what kind of world that truly was, he may have stopped doing that nightly ritual right there and then. As it was, he had no idea, and continued doing so. All babies awoke in the middle of the night crying. It was just what babies did. Surely it wasn’t anything else.
 

“Oh God, how I was wrong,” Moses murmured. He had finished off all the rum in his glass and now just stared at it. With his thumbnail he scratched at Big Bird’s yellow face. Not once had he looked up at me since he started talking. “I was so wrong, but how was I supposed to know it at the time? I couldn’t. But still I felt guilty later, when I understood. Before that though ...”
 

Joey was almost three years old when it first happened. One morning, while Moses was giving him his bath, Joey said, “Maine.” He’d been speaking for a little over a year now, and was pretty good with his words. But hearing his son just then Moses thought Joey had said
main
as in the adjective and not
Maine
as in the noun—or, in this case, the state. Moses didn’t think much of it at the time—his son, like most babies, would sometimes say random things—and continued giving Joey his bath. But then after a moment, when Joey realized his father didn’t quite hear him, he said, “Daddy, we go Maine.” Right then it clicked that it wasn’t the adjective Joey meant.
 

“Why do we have to go to Maine?” Moses asked him. No one he knew lived there. No family, no friends, no one. But his son only repeated what he had said before, and when Moses asked one more time why, Joey said, “Seven.” And that was it. The issue was dropped at once. Joey went about his business like nothing had happened.
 

Moses decided to do the same and didn’t even think about it again until a week later, when he saw something in
USA Today
. (“I had become accustomed to reading it every morning,” he said; “Besides Joey, it was the only family I had.”) A bank robbery in Portland, Maine had gone terribly wrong. It seemed the cops had arrived before the three robbers were able to make it out. Over thirty people were in the bank at the time, both customers and employees. At first the robbers used them as hostages, but then as time went on they started killing them off. Executing them one at a time. When the cops finally got inside, the robbers had killed seven people. The story itself, while tragic, wouldn’t really have caught Moses’s attention had it not been for that number. The same number Joey mentioned a week before—both seven
and
Maine in the same egregious context.
 

“But I couldn’t say anything to my boy.” Moses lit another cigarette. “After the bathtub incident, which I later started calling it, he hadn’t even brought up the subject of us having to go to Maine, or the number seven. He went on like any normal three-year-old. Besides, what did he know of death, except the fact that his momma was no longer living? Nothing, so I decided to chalk it up as a coincidence and leave it at that.”
 

But then, four months later, it happened again. This time though it wasn’t just something small like Joey mentioning it out of the blue while taking his bath, or while Moses strapped him into his car seat to take him to daycare. This time it was late at night and Joey had begun screaming. Moses, hearing this from where he slept across the living room on the couch, jumped straight awake. The shrillness of his child’s screams scared him, actually caused gooseflesh to break out over his body. Moses had heard Joey cry before in the middle of the night, but never like this, never with so much intensity. He figured his son had had dreams before, but never nightmares.
 

This was only the beginning.
 

“When I got across the room Joey was shaking. Tears were all over his face. He stood up and jumped into my arms. Just kept crying and hugged me real tight, wouldn’t let me go. When he finally got settled, I asked him what was wrong. He looked up at me—he didn’t need glasses then—and said, ‘We go Richmond, Daddy.’ I said, ‘Richmond? Richmond, Virginia?’ He just nodded.”